By Kabuye Muawiya,
NATIONAL
Ministry of internal affairs has appealed to the public to acquire their passports within appropriate time to avoid panic and pressure at last minute because this is the main reason why brokers get them offside.
The spokesperson of the ministry of internal affairs Simon Peter Mundeyi while addressing the journalists at the police headquarters in Nuguru revealed that 90% of Ugandans acquire passports only when they are leaving the country and start panicking at the ministry’s offices.
“Ugandans only acquire passports when they are sick or they are going for green pastures and you find them at the offices sweating, panicking. Brokers take advantage of this panic to extort from apolicants,” Mundeyi said.
Mundeyi cites out one of the government official who was trapped by third parties at the ministry commonly referred to as brokers and he corned him of two million shillings to get a passport which is at only two hundred fifty thousand shillings.
“It is ashaming that one of the government officials who knows all the procedures of acquiring a passport was trapped by brokers and after he found out that he was not dealing with a right person he came complaining at our offices,” Mundeyi added.
JUST IN: @PoliceUg says that only 0.036% of Ugandans have passports. This means that 99.6% of Ugandans do not own passports. Police advises Ugandans not to apply for passports when they are faced with emergencies but to aplly on time to avoid inconveniences. #ParrotsugNews pic.twitter.com/DeLQianbZx
— Parrots UG (@parrotsug) July 18, 2022
It was noted that there are so many brokers surrounding internal affairs offices trying to get money from people pretending that there are helping them to acquire passports.
“Yes, we know that there brokers surrounding our offices but please deal with people putting on our uniforms because if u deal with brokers then you will have to pay a lot of money to get passports yet a passport is at two hundred fifty thousand shillings, four hundred thousand shillings for the green passport and five hundred thousand shillings for the red passport,”Mundeyi elaborated,” he added
Rumors have been moving around social media reading that internal affairs offices are no longer bringing out passports but the internal affairs spokesperson confirmed that their offices have never stopped giving out passports dismissing the speculation as misleading information.
In addition, Mundeyi noted that many rich Ugandans with money make mistakes while applying for ordinary passports instead they are apply for Diplomatic passports yet they are not eligible to get them.
“Ugandans with too much money are wrongly applying for Diplomatic passports and ending up losing their money,”
He said adding that diplomatic passports (green in colour) are given to Ugandan diplomats on diplomatic or official duties and specific members of their families like spouses and other high ranking officials such as the President, ministers, judges, members of Parliament, religious and traditional leaders.
